A 1980 Teenager's View of Social Media | Hacker News Reader

A 1980 Teenager's View of Social Media

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76 pointsbrianstorms36 comments

You know what's weird? I met my future wife online at college via a PARTI (PARTICIPATE, a terminal based messaging system running on PR1MOS that allowed a form of effectively real-time chatting and pseudonyms) in college...in the mid 1980s.

So in most of the 1980s and into the 1990s, I couldn't really effectively answer the "how did you meet" question because that wasn't yet a thing yet. ("On the computer" wasn't really satisfactory before people had a notion of "online".) And when it was more technically explainable, it was sort of seedy because there was so little that was local or social about it.

So the discovery, decades later, of people meeting online, of social media, of dating sites, of changing screen names to reflect your mood...that all seemed ancient in a way.

The only thing left is to watch it go by, to be rediscovered again by those new to computers...

>So in most of the 1980s and into the 1990s, I couldn't really effectively answer the "how did you meet" question because that wasn't yet a thing yet. ("On the computer" wasn't really satisfactory before people had a notion of "online".) And when it was more technically explainable, it was sort of seedy because there was so little that was local or social about it.

That's really interesting. At one point I interned at PARC, and we were looking at making some sort of privacy protecting online dating service. (E.g. your data is encrypted, only decryped when two people match)

But after the initial set of interviews I did, I found most people were more concerned with trust - is the information on this profile accurate? They couldn't care less if people are using online dating. Which surprised some of my colleagues.

Section 3.3 of our paper details this if anyone is interested in more detail:

http://www.kisc.meiji.ac.jp/~ethicj/USEC13/submissions/usec1...)

> "On the computer"

Oh, computer dating, where you input your statistics and the computer picks the logically perfect match. Nah, it'll never catch on.

(Remember that idea?)

It still exists. It's called "OKCupid".

The "matching" part of OK cupid is a joke/gimmick, though. It's accuracy level is not really well correlated to the site success. They even showed that once when they intentionally flipped the match scores

cbd1984's comment was a joke.

"So in most of the 1980s and into the 1990s, I couldn't really effectively answer the "how did you meet" question because that wasn't yet a thing yet."

But Jumpin' Jack Flash came out in 1986!

Wow, this was a hugely entertaining read. I can hardly believe it was written in 1980. Really lost it, laughing out loud at this part (and several other parts):

> There is nothing like going home to the parents house and sitting there at the dinner table trying to explain what an amazing set of conversations you had today on the computer. They’re like, what? It can take an entire dinner conversation to try to explain what pnotes and TERM-talk are, and then you realize by the end of dinner, you have gotten nowhere, and they still simply Do. Not. Get. It. It’s frustrating. Some day, everyone will use these kinds of tools and we won’t be having these pointless hour-long conversations at the dinner table or anywhere else, trying to explain The Future, which for some weird reason you, lucky bastard, are already IN, while they’re still stuck in the past. I look forward to when this stuff is all mainstream and people can just talk about the online mail and chats they had today and nobody bats an eye. It will come. Question is, how long?

It wasn't written in 1980, it's a tongue-in-cheek response to an article written by a 2015 teenager that went viral yesterday: https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-me...

Ah, thank you. I was starting to get a bit of vertigo on how prescient this was, I felt like I was reading The Machine. Now that I know it's satire it makes a lot more sense.

I know they're talking of WordPress.com, but hearing "WordPress" and "sophisticated" amuses me.

We're not there yet, because technology keeps advancing and some people (stereotypically older) don't keep up, but the baseline of assumed knowledge does keep rising.

At this point, the ideas of what a computer does and what the Internet does (not so much what they are, but the basic role they play) are assumed knowledge for everyone still active in the economy. The stereotypical image now is less "Old man picks up a computer mouse like a TV remote control and tries to change the channel on the monitor" and more "Old man has one inch of usable browser window due to the vast encrustation of spyware toolbars", which implies enough basic technical knowledge to even get those toolbars.

It really wasn't too long ago when the comic stereotype of "really out-of-it old man" involved a horse and a plow and a Franklin stove, and I think that's pretty amazing.

On the other hand:

> I look forward to when this stuff is all mainstream and people can just talk about the online mail and chats they had today and nobody bats an eye.

I think this time still haven't come yet. Of course almost everyone talks on-line a lot now, but adults can't admit openly they do, lest they get stigmatized as computer-addicted nerds who need to "log off to real life". Society at large still doesn't accept IMs and e-mails as a legitimate communication form. Maybe we need to wait until current teens grow up.

But people do understand that computers are a legitimate tool for everyday use (I remember when that wasn't so- even though personal computers were somewhat available, it was a little suspicious if you used one to do something that could be done otherwise).

So if somebody says they found a new way- using a computer- to solve an old problem, it's not so out of the ordinary, even if nobody else in the conversation had solved that problem in that way yet. Instead of scorn you are as likely to be met with "what a good idea."

It's on the boundary now, with Twitter and to a lesser extent Facebook being mentioned casually by celebrities on TV chat shows. The BBC routinely go to Twitter for "vox pops" where previously they'd have gone into the street to ask random people.

On the contrary, actually. Celebrities giving free advertising for corporate products and luring people there is not really the same as educating people about what online mail and chat are, or rather a very specific biased kind of.

I mean I have family member who have been using computers online for years and still struggle to grasp basic online concept such a web browser, a search engine or email though they use it daily.

Replacing random people on the street who actually are somewhat random actual people going around their day by twitter accounts who represent a small subset of online personas registered to a corporate web service which can be people or not is a frightening trend.

The interaction of the BBC's "no brand names on air" policy with this is often hilarious, as they have to either refer to "social media" or say "other <X> are available" if they do mention a brand name.

If you knock on people's doors, those are people registered with some corporate mail service. Why does a corporation make a communication tool bad?

It's not the corporation that makes a communication tool bad, it's the selection bias introduced by some of those tools that make them bad for purpose of sampling opinions of general population.

You can assume that almost every citizen has a permanent address, and thus a mailbox. Nowdays in many countries you can also assume that almost everyone has a phone. But the demographics of Twitter are much different. Your average farmer, or liberal arts major, or most of the people over 50 probably haven't even heard about it. Using tweets to approximate vox populi will make your result heavily biased towards a particular group of people.

Very interesting read. I often try to educate people telling them that the social network gimmick is just that : a gimmick in a marketing ploy. A network of computers is social by nature of the users being social beings. Using computers in a network was already social when I got in in the 1990's. The social part is not from facebook or whatever the current popular thing is, they try to get hold of it for their own profit and it's sad.

I'm looked at weird when I say that so called social networks feature regressions from what was possible then. Reading this article, I learned that even in the 1990's we had made a few steps backward from the previous decades, I mean what happened to the simple feedback channel offered by TERM-comment ? How come this is not a standard feature ?

Oh man, so many good memories from that. My friend RPD III was so good at flashhook dialing we could dial in to PLATO even with a lock on the rotary phone, which was no small feat since it had a large number of high digits and a zero or two.

We figured out the local admin's password (superkey+text man) and gave ourselves extra accounts and privileges. Sure we had hacked access to our RSTS/E PDP 11/34A by snagging the sysadmin's password off the LA30/LA36 (forget which) and replacing the login program, but even with Tek 4014 terminals it was nothing like PLATO.

This article makes me miss Learnlink, Emory University's bulletin board and student email system from the mid-nineties to 2012. It was still going strong when I graduated in 2007. There's something magic that happens when everyone in a community is using the same service. Even though students come and go, a culture develops.

There have been at least a couple replacement attempts, but I don't know if either have caught on.

https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/emoryit/2014/06/20/learnlink-...

http://osls.emory.edu/student_orgs/community/ll_to_community...

http://www.emorywheel.com/emory-bubble-launches-aims-to-repl...

Really interesting article. I wish it hadn't been written with the gimmick of being written as if it were from the 80s.

Then you have a website[1] to look at and a book[2] to read.

[1] : http://platohistory.org/ [2] : http://friendlyorangeglow.com/

It was a response to this article: https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-me...

I know. I knew that based on the title. I still wish it was a response and not an emulation or whatever.

Heh. I learnt to touch type on a PLATO system in 1990.

"The all-too-few of us already thriving online now and who’ve seen the future, find it hard to explain to the multitudes who haven’t yet what this all is and why it’s really important."

Some people are well-aware of what computers are, but they choose not to use them. It's not because they don't have the money or the expertise to use them; I know a sheriff's deputy who uses computers in his work, but he doesn't have a computer at home. He never uses a computer when he's off work.

From time to time I suggest to people where they can get free computer training; there are ways to obtain actual hardware either inexpensively or even free of charge.

But few who I offer such suggestions to, want to use computers. The reason they don't use computers is not because they cannot, but choose not to.

I wonder how much of that choice is driven by fear, not so much fear that the computer would Do Bad Things, like some enraged minor deity, but fear that they really are Out Of It and can't learn new things.

If they don't try, they can't fail, and they don't have to face up to things quite yet.

Maybe I'm being uncharitable.

OR they consider computers as work machines and don't want to bring work home.

I mean, if all you're going to do with it is watch TV and fart around online, you don't need a computer at home really. You're better off without TV and you're definitely better off without wasting time on imgur, HN, Facebook, etc.

My point is, having a computer at home is kind of passe these days unless you're a nerd.

Considering how many people use Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp, your notion of "passe" is... passe.

Most people use those on their phone, not on their computers.

Looking at my non-nerd family members and non-nerd friends it seems that the only reason anyone opens a computer is to watch a movie, watch youtube on a bigger screen, or to do some sort of work or another. (school reports for instance)

Anecdote: If I ever switch profession it's already decided I will not have a computer at home.

I think this statement reflects that this is a period piece describing a time when you told people you had a computer and they would always inevitably ask you "but what are you going to DO with it?"

Some people know all about computers. That's why they choose not to use them - that Sheriff's Deputy for example.

I myself am quite a good automobile driver. I have no problem at all driving quite safely at one-hundred miles per hour. I'm also handy with tools, so I have no problem maintaining a car all on my own.

Even so, I prefer public transportation for many good reasons. It's not like I don't know what I could do with a car. It's that I like riding trains.

Unfortunately today i find the response is all to often "but do I really HAVE to use the computer". Some people still don't get it!

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